Breaking Walls

On Friday, July 23rd, 1937 at 10PM eastern time from the Mutual Broadcasting System’s flagship station WOR in New York, a seven-part adaptation of Victor Hugo’s famed novel Les Misérables debuted.

It was written, directed, and starred a twenty-two year-old Orson Welles. The production also marked the radio debut of the Mercury Theatre troupe It co-starred Martin Gabel as Javert, Alice Frost as Fantine, Virginia Nicolson Welles as the adult Cosette, and Ray Collins, Agnes Moorehead, Everett Sloane, Betty Garde, Hiram Sherman, Frank Readick, and Richard Widmark.

Welles' Les Miserables adaptation was considered to be one of the finest dramatic anthologies ever broadcast. It cemented Welles as a very rare "quadruple threat." He could write, produce, direct, and act. The humanizing way in which he played Jean Valjean, emphasized both the tones of the story, and the ability of the actor.

Les Miserables increased the cache of the Mutual Broadcasting System, and soon landed Welles another role of a lifetime. On Sunday September 26th, 1937, Three weeks after the broadcast of the final chapter of Les Miserables from WOR, Orson Welles debuted as a new crime-fighting hero, The Shadow, on the same network.

In January of 1981 Bob Hope made an appearance on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. In this conversation they spoke about radio, playing golf, performing for US Presidents, and Bob's formative years.

March 1835: Paris, France.

What does an inheritance, a proposition, and two lovely Russian countesses have in common?

Don’t be fooled, danger is coming.

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Premiering soon on your favorite podcast app, Burning Gotham, the new scripted audio fiction podcast, set in 1835 New York City. Subscribe to this audio feed to learn more, or go to BurningGotham.com.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, director Peter Bogdanovich recorded conversations with friend and mentor Orson Welles about his life and career. These later turned into a biography, finally published in 1992.

During one chat, Welles told a funny story about working with the emotional Irving Reis and equally emotional Bernard Herrmann on a radio adaptation of Hamlet.

On February 18th, 1973, Agnes Moorehead was a guest of Dick Cavett's for his late night ABC television program. During the course of the conversation, Ms. Moorehead recounted the first time she met her close friend Orson Welles. Welles was fifteen years younger than her. They met one Summer afternoon when he was seven years old.

On October 28, 1940, Orson Welles and H.G. Wells met for the first time in San Antonio, TX. They appeared on a panel for KTSA discussing H.G. Wells' take on Orson's War of the Worlds broadcast as well as the upcoming Citizen Kane. It was an incredible, foreboding few minutes.

In May of 1955, CBS' duel broadcast of Gunsmoke’s pulled in radio’s highest combined rating. New episodes aired on Saturday evenings with a repeat the following Saturday afternoon.

On May 21st, CBS broadcast an episode entitled "The Liar from Blackhawk" about what happens when a man pretends to be a gunman.

Gunsmoke’s success led to its TV incarnation, and several CBS western radio dramas in the late 1950s.

Hal Styles of KMDR interviews Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth on the day of their marriage at the Mercury Wonder Show.

This is a snippet from Breaking Walls Episode 90: The Hollywood People Behind Radio’s Baby Boomer Boom (1945 - 1954).

By 1946 Los Angeles was the number one location for dramatic radio’s production. Hollywood had the country’s biggest stars and radio’s most famous performers. Jack Benny, Bob Hope, Red Skelton, and many others called Hollywood home. Even before the war, Los Angeles had been attracting hopeful radio actors, writers, and producers. By America’s first year of peace, a troupe of hungry professionals had assembled. These are some of their thoughts on the people they knew and the industry they worked so closely with.

COMING SOON

New York, 1835: A city at its tipping point.

It’s ten years since the completion of the Erie Canal. New York City’s population is now over 270,000. Most of these people live below Fourteenth Street in wooden or brick buildings no taller than five stories. The gap between rich and poor is rapidly expanding as each week thousands of new men and women pour onto New York’s dangerously overcrowded streets. Many come to earn an honest living.

Others for more nefarious reasons.

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As New York grows, widening old streets and creating new ones is paramount. It raises property value, but property taxes can only increase if the land is improved upon. Buyers are purchasing land on credit and selling to someone new before needing to pay back the original balance.

This artificial inflation is creating a very unstable economy.

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The city has no reliable source of drinking water. Although New Yorkers vote in favor of the Croton Aqueduct in April, construction is yet to begin. The aqueduct needs to be paid for. That same month, officials place a twenty-four hour guard in the cupola of City Hall to ring a large bell and hang a light in the direction of any fire. The potential for a cholera epidemic or a crippling blaze is a constant source of fear.

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These fears are stirred by the City’s penny papers, chiefly The Sun and The New York Herald, whose publishers Benjamin Day and James Gordon Bennett are battling for readership. In August, this battle leads to the greatest literary hoax of the nineteenth century—fooling both layman and scholar—portending the existence of intelligent life on the Moon.

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Even as he calls the hoax remarkable, Phineas T. Barnum is orchestrating one of his own. With the help of William Niblo, Barnum is set to display a woman named Joice Heth: Ms. Heth claims to be the one-hundred-sixty-one year-old nursemaid of George Washington. Remarkable indeed.

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New York is a powder keg. On the frigid, blustery night of December 16th, 1835, it finally explodes as the worst fire in city history sweeps through Manhattan. The East River is frozen solid. The undermanned and exhausted team of volunteer firefighters are no match. Everything south of Maiden Lane and east of Broad Street—the chief merchant district and the one with the highest property value—turns to ash.

The fire causes the modern equivalent of $500 million in damages. The official investigation finds it to have been caused by a leaky gas valve near a lit coal stove. No public blame is assigned.

But what if New York’s greatest fire was no accident?

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Coming soon to your favorite podcast app: Burning Gotham, the new audio drama about the fastest growing city in the world, and the opportunists who shaped it.